


Home

by orphan_account



Series: Almei week 2017 [5]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: AlMei Week, Cute, F/M, Home
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-11
Updated: 2017-08-11
Packaged: 2018-12-14 06:01:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11776950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Alphonse never got too attached to a place to call it home, because breaking from it always hurt.Written for Day 5 of AlMei week, for the prompt home.





	Home

Alphonse hardly ever called a place “home”. It wasn’t necessarily because he didn’t feel at home, but because the word came with many implications. It came with the promise that it was a place where he would stay an indefinite amount of time, it came with many responsibilities and, above all, it came with the promise of building a family.

When he was just a child, he used to have a place he could freely name home. In fact, he probably had two, given that Winry’s house was just as familiar to him as their own, but Al preferred to refer to Resembool in general as home. He felt a special connection with the people there, and they all treated him and his Brother nicely.

But then, after his mom died, Al came to learn that home wasn’t just a place. It was a feeling that came with the involvement of several persons, and missing one mere human was more than enough to destroy the safety that feeling bestowed upon one.

The only times he felt something akin to that feeling was when him and his Brother would spend an afternoon with Winry, forgetting their alchemy books and bringing their mother back to life. Winry was the only person they had ever met that could restore the purity of the sentiment, and even then, not entirely. Alphonse doubted the existence of a person that could, for that matter.

When Al and Ed decided to burn down their house, it was just the exteriorisation of a feeling they had both had since long ago. Losing the physical representation of that didn’t hurt at all. In fact, it put them both at ease: at least now, they didn’t have to pretend having a home anymore.

But living without any place to call home proved to be impossible: Al and Ed attributed the feeling to the only other important person in their lives: Winry. And for the longest time, that was a place Al fondly referred to as home. He knew his Brother and his childhood friend were all he needed in order to feel safe and fulfilled.

Being on the run most of the time, they couldn’t really hang around a place enough to get attached to it and call it their home. Al got used to it being just him and Ed and was happy solong that was true. While they had each other, they were home. Or the closest version to that they would get in the near future.

Certain things changed after the Promised Day, though. More than ever, Alphonse started feeling the house on the hill in Resembool was becoming more of a home for his Brother and Winry, as they grew closer and more intimate with each other. It became the place that hid them from outsiders and the place where their family started blossoming. And despite knowing the last thing either of them wanted was for Al to leave, he felt the need to do so. He knew he still needed the two in his life to feel complete, but he respected their feelings enough to understand they wanted to start a family of their own and he couldn’t step into the small universe their home was.

And so, he left for Xing. That place was even stranger than the place in Resembool, in the sense that it hosted 50 big families and yet, Al could tell it wasn’t a home to any of them. They were big, dysfunctional communities that didn’t even search for stability and equilibrium in their broken lives, and caracked even more in the avid search for power.

In this mess of a fight for political monopole, there were a handful of people trying to restore the glory of the country by building their own home. Three of these unique and rare exemplars were Ling, Lan and Mei. They themselves came from backgrounds that should have rendered them incapable of knowing the meaning of having a family, and yet, they managed to move things in the right direction ever so slightly.

In the midst of them, Al found himself growing fonder and fonder of the now grown-up princess of Xing, Mei Chang. She was a source of energy, a ray of sunshine that did her best to help anyone around her. Spending time with her, Al started understanding Edward and Winry better, as well as their desire for a smaller place to develop a family.

And now here they were, alone in Amestris, living in the East City, having bought their first house to try rediscovering the true meaning of home they had both lost so long ago.

“Do you need a hand with that?” Alphonse asked Mei, propping his hand against the box she was holding to prevent it from falling down from the shelf.

“If you would.” She answered, stepping aside and letting Al handle the heavy stuff. He put it on the floor, a small wave of dust raising up from it as it hit the ground. They coughed a bit, weaving the annoying trail of particles away.

He opened the box to more dust covering some old alchemy books of his childhood, some of them his father’s studies, if he recognised them through the thick layer of dirt correctly.

“I forgot I even brought this with me.” He admitted, dusting them off and picking one up.

“Alchemy books?” Mei raised an eyebrow, taking another one up and paging it, causing another rush of slim to rise. “Handwritten.” She added, slightly impressed.

“That might be Brother’s. Or maybe mine.” Al reminisced, flipping to the last page to see his name neatly written under the last paragraph. “Mine.” He concluded, smiling fondly at the memory.

“When did you…?” Mei started, turning around to him with eyes widened in amazement.

“When we were children.” He ruffled his hair and turned to the box: “most of these must be on human transmutation.” He sighed, placing a hand on his hip and shaking his head in disappointment.

He suddenly felt Mei’s hand on his arm, petting him reassuringly. He whipped his head around to be enveloped in her fond look, and couldn’t help bringing her closer in a hug.

He was glad he had his body back to feel this, and to be able to sense his surroundings with all his senses. He could now not only see her and their house, but also feel her touch and take in her scent, brush his hand against the rough walls of their room and smell the dinner she prepared him. And one day, he’ll be able to hold their child and guide another soul through the labyrinth of life in the search of a place to call home.

With all of his senses, he could now take in their house and the people that were important to him to finally find the home he had been looking for.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello again!  
> I hope you've enjoyed this... I'm not so proud of this one, but what's coming for Day 6 is my favourite prompt, so I hope it will be better!


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